I had a good feeling about Eaves right from the get-go. Maybe it was just the way Cleary worked out for us. I can see Eaves being a guy who works himself onto the 3rd line, even with a healthy line-up. He's RFA at the end of this season too, so I hope they choose to retain him. I can't see any reason they wouldn't. He's the exact kind of play the Wings need for the bottom 6 of their forward corps. Speed kills my friends.

The most popular choice among the Red Wings as to who would volunteer to play goalie – several Panthers did in their game – was Brendan Smith.

"He's pretty competitive and he seems to be good at everything," Justin Abdelkader said. "He'd volunteer himself."

Babcock was a bit more hesitant about Smith. "Yeah, yeah, just work on getting out of your zone," Babcock said

I always thought he had potential to be great. Every time I've ever seen him play (on any prior teams) he just looked like he didn't have anyone to click with. Now he has a few, and he's been doing damn well. I hope we keep him out of all our offseason pickups, as he was also the one I was most interested and excited for.

Sucked against Montreal and Florida. Didnt hit or forecheck well, he needs to learn that he isnt worth a dame unless he is doing that, we need that lineto provide energy everynight.

I don't really think of Eaves as a forechecker. To me he's just a seat filler on the 4th line who doesn't do anything particularly well. We'd have been better in the offseason of signing someone like Winchester or Crombeen to fill that same role.

At the same time, he doesn't do anything stupid out there, so maybe the Wings are happy just with that. Hence the idea of a seat filler.